


shadowkat | Spike and Riley - the Monster in the Man - circa 2002

by shadowkat67



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Essays, F/M, Gen, Literary References & Allusions, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-13
Updated: 2009-07-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22368880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Summary: Riley Finn and Spike are both victims of Professor Walsh's insane biological experiments in Season 4, BTVS and forever changed by them.Both restrain a monster inside, yet in different ways. This is a character analysis of Spike and Riley, and how they reflect one another.
Relationships: Riley Finn/Buffy Summers, Spike/Buffy Summers
Kudos: 3





	shadowkat | Spike and Riley - the Monster in the Man - circa 2002

When I was a child one of the films that scared me the most was the Island of Dr. Moreau, which I later became obsessed with as an adult. What scared me is the same thing that obsesses me now: the metamorphosis concept - a concept that has been used by literary greats such as H.G Wells, Franz Kafka, and Robert Louis Stevenson for centuries. The book the Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G . Wells is quite different from the movie and the movie I'm referring to is the old one with Burt Lancaster and Michael York. In the book, the good Doctor is only attempting to bring the man out in the beast, in the movie the good Doctor is attempting to do both, bring out the man in the beast and the beast out in the man. Playing god.

In Season 4 of Btvs -the mad Dr. Walsh did just that - played god. Dr. Walsh, a fiendish psychologist, believed she could harness the savage nature of the sub-terrain creatures, which Buffy refers to as demons, and create some sort of human/beast hybrid. She created Adam, who was more beast than man. In the process of doing this - she experimented on Riley and Spike just as Dr. Moreau experimented on his creations. In the film version, the narrator is altered through chemistry and surgery to become more bestial in nature, just as Riley is. The doctor does same thing to the animals of the Island, just as Walsh does to the demons, specifically Spike. The results are similar - in Island of Dr. Moreau, the beasts rebel and the narrator appears to shed his bestial form, aiding in the destruction of the Doctor's enterprise as well as escaping the Island. In Btvs Season 4 - Primeval, the beasts rebel and Riley & Spike join the others in defeating the Intiative. (As I'm writing this I am reminded of another secret paradise and another mad occupant who uses creatures to work his will - Prospero, the magician in Shakespeare's The Tempest. In The Tempest, Caliban is a monster that lusts after Prospero's daughter while enslaved by Prospero's magicks. He, of course, can never have the daughter - she falls for the handsome son of Prospero's enemy, Ferdinand who shipwrecks on the island. (Ferdinand reminds me a little of Riley). She is unable to see past Caliban's monstrosity and Caliban attempts to force himself on her, rebels against Prospero, aids Prosperos enemies without much success, and eventually learns the error of his ways. He is described in the play as the darker side of human nature. During Season 4, Btvs, Spike reminds me of Caliban. Except unlike Caliban, the chip does not enslave him to the Scoobies.) So what do Walsh's experiments mean to Spike and Riley in Btvs, now that Intiative is no more? We have two characters that have been forever changed by Walsh, changes that set these characters on parallel but separate paths.

Riley is introduced at the beginning of Season 4 as your basic good guy jock. He is charmingly tongue-tied when he talks to Buffy and very athletic. Then we learn he has this cool secret life as a demon hunter. We think gee - we've got to get Buffy and Riley together - they have so much in common. It reminds me a bit of Batman and Catwoman. Except for one little problem, Riley's superhuman status isn't real. He has been filled with tons of toxins to make him strong plus a behavioral modification chip. The Initiative run by Dr. Walsh was attempting to make super-soliders and Riley was her pet experiment. (We learn this in Goodbye Iowa and later in Primeval - As Spike states: "So it's chips all around, is it? Someone must have bought the party-pak." Riley's chip is just below his left shoulder not far from his heart.) This story is echoed in the film version of The Island of Dr. Moreau where the Doctor changes his assistant into a beast. It's the old let's make the man stronger by finding the beast within. Except as Spike later states in Into The Woods - Riley just doesn't have it in him. His beast almost kills him. When he is abruptly taken of the toxins, he goes into withdrawl. Later in Season 5, he has to have the remainder of Dr. Walsh's adjustments removed or he will die of a heart attack. (See Out of My Mind, Season 5 Btvs.)

What we aren't sure of is what type of man Riley was prior to the programming. When we first meet him - he's super-confident with the guys, but a tad nervous around women. Loyal to the cause. Yet also very patronizing - telling Buffy she's just a girl and needs to be protected. He also sees things in strict shades of black and white and believes the government is right and should be in control of the situation. Civilians such as Buffy and her pals should stay out of it. As he states in Pangs - "Hostile 17 (Spike) may be harmless but he knows about the Initiative and must not remain free." The government comes first.

Spike on the other hand is introduced as a villain whose only goal in life is to kill the slayer. Once Dr. Walsh inserts the chip in Spike' neural cortex (brain), he has to reinvent himself. He can no longer eat the way he once did, he can no longer kill humans or anything that's an animal and alive. He has no home, since he pretty much alienated Harmony with his obsession for Buffy. When we see him in Pangs he is wandering the streets beneath a raggedy blanket, looking half starved, and watching other vamps suck blood. He's become an outsider even to his own kind. As Harmony states in Out of My Mind: "You know what it means that he can't hurt any living thing? It means he can't even pick flowers." (Actually he can pick flowers - but you get the point.) Desperate and not completely rational, Spike seeks out the Scoobies, the very people he wanted to destroy, and literally throws himself upon their mercy. If it weren't for the Scoobies, his chip may have killed him. (See Pangs, Season 4 Btvs.) Meanwhile, in the same episode, we see Riley in charge of a swat team hunting Spike, discussing plans to go home for Thanksgiving, and chatting with his mates. Riley, chipped (I mean enhanced, I know his behavior modification chip was removed in Primeval), is clearly at the top of his game. The contrast is striking.

Riley's enhancements clearly made him stronger, while Spike's chip made him weaker. We don't know what Riley was like before Professor Walsh, so we can only guess as to the effects her operations had on his overall character. Spike on the other hand was an animal, not unlike the character of Caliban in The Tempest, ruthless, manipulative, opportunistic, and unlike Caliban, in love with another evil animal. Now dumped by that significant other - he's obsessed with destroying what he believed was the root cause of it, the slayer. Whether this initial obsession was merely one of lust and killing slayers or there was something more has yet to be fully disclosed in Season 4. In Season 5's Fool For Love flashbacks- Drusilla states there was more to it than that, a belief she later reiterates in Crush (Season 5 Btvs.) I think Spike's demonic nature makes it difficult for him to separate his emotions in a calm rational manner; they tend to get all bundled up and confused inside him. And he does have a tendency to react without thinking things through. (The Iniative, Season 4 Btvs.) It wasn't until he got the behavior modification chip, that he was able to process his feelings in a somewhat rational manner and get to the truth, a truth that a more objective and less emotional Drusilla with her added capacity for second-sight saw all along. I think Spike preferred the hatred and lust; it was easier for him to manage. Riley was first drawn to Buffy while chipped, we have no clue if he would have been drawn to her if he didn't have the superpowers, but I think so, since he didn't know she had any when they first got involved. It is interesting how he behaves towards her once he becomes de-chipped and the super-powers are removed. In a sense, he becomes a weaker character sans chip.

Riley, for his part, does not want to lose his super-strength, which is caused by the toxins. He has allowed it to define him, just as he's allowed it to define his relationship with Buffy. (They don't appear to have a relationship outside of sex and fighting). Riley at this point doesn't appear to know who he is anymore. The government has played so many mind-games with him, that he has lost his identity and has begun to rely on Buffy to give him one. As his friend Graham puts it in Out of My Mind (Season 5 Btvs): "You used to have a mission, and now you're what? The mission's boyfriend? Mission's true love?" So he believes he's nothing without the strength and resists its removal. As he states: "I'm more powerful than I've ever been, Buffy. Most people would kill to feel this way." Except as Buffy points out - it is killing him. But Riley doesn't really care because as he puts it: " I go back ... let the government get whimsical with my innards again ... They could do anything that- Best-case scenario, they turn me into Joe Normal, just... (sighs) Just another guy." And that is what he is most afraid of. He is afraid that he will lose her if he becomes normal, that she can only love him if he has the monster strength and the toxins inside. Buffy tries to tell him that super-powers mean nothing to her: "No! No. Do you think that I spent the last year with you because you had super powers? If that's what I wanted, then I'd be dating Spike."More ironic words were never spoken. Maybe Riley has a point? Perhaps Buffy can only be interested in a guy with superhuman strength? Or as Spike points out in both Into the Woods and As You Were - "she needs a little monster in her man?" Actually Spike may be on to something, which neither Buffy nor Riley quite understand. It's not superpowers she wants, she can live without them, as she proved in the Atvs episode where Angel briefly became human. What she wants is someone who can grasp both sides of her nature without pulling her to one side or the other. Someone who appreciates the need for balance, who appreciates the struggle between dark and light inside her, someone who has struggled to maintain this balance within themselves, someone who is a lot like Giles but isn't Giles. In fact, I think that is who Buffy has been hunting her whole life, a physically younger version of Giles. (This may be part of the reason Buffy fell so hard for Angel, because Angel understood her struggle, Angel had both dark and light inside struggling for control; the only problem with Angel, as he points out, is Buffy inadvertently brings out the monster in him. She appears to do the reverse with Spike. Odd. Buffy may have had the same problem with Riley, she brought out the worst in him as well, possibly because Riley felt he had to somehow match her darkness?)

If Professor Walsh's toxins and surgical methods made Riley stronger and more monsterous, her methods had the opposite effect on Spike. Spike was weakened by the chip. Instead of unleashing his monster, they effectively put a muzzle on it. As Spike states in Pangs: "I'm saying that Spike had a little trip to the vet and now he doesn't chase the other puppies anymore. I can't bite anything. I can't even hit people." Spike, like Riley, has to adapt to his new status, but he doesn't have Professor Walsh and the Initiative helping him. Instead he has to do it on his own with a little assistance from Giles and the Scooby Gang. In the process, Spike begins to discover new things about himself. First that he can get blood from plastic packets and find ways to make it palatable. We see him adding Weetabix to it for texture in HUSH. In All The Way, he mentions adding Burba Weed to make it hot and spicy. We also see him nicking it from the hospital in Weight of the World. He also learns he can fight demons, even kill demons - this provides Spike with a purpose again as he states in that wonderful last speech in Doomed: "What's this? Sitting around watching the telly while there's evil still a foot. That's not very industrious of you. I say we go out there and kick a little demon ass! What, can't go without your Buffy, is that it? To chicken? Let's find her! She is the Chosen One after all. - Come on! Vampires! Grrr! Nasty! Let's annihilate them. For justice - and for - the safety of puppies - and Christmas, right? Let's *fight* that evil! - Let's *kill* something! Oh, come *on*!"

A big difference between Spike and Riley - is Spike wants to get the chip out. What does the chip mean to Spike? Besides making it impossible for him to eat like a vampire? Adam describes it perfectly in Yoko Factor: "You feel smothered. Trapped like an animal. Pure in its ferocity, unable to actualize the urges within. Clinging to one truth. Like a flame struggling to burn within an enclosed glass. That a beast this powerful cannot be contained. Inevitably it will break free and savage the land again. I will make you whole again. Make you savage." The chip is castrating to Spike. It is like a wheelchair. To Spike's credit - he does try on several occasions remove it. First -in Something Blue when he escapes the Scoobies to try and find the entrance to the Initiative. Then by working with Adam, who promises him that he'll remove it only to rescind on his offer, forcing Spike to switch sides in order to survive. Then finally in Out of My Mind - trying to get a neurosurgeon to remove it. The neurosurgeon succeeds in removing Riley's modifications but not Spike's. This is a turning point for both characters because it is at this point that they are both forced to re-evaluate their respective situations. The manner in which they re-evaluate them is oddly similar with different results.

Riley re-evaluates his situation - regarding a)Buffy and b) his purpose in life. Without the superstrength he has in Buffy's words become: "weak and kittenish", someone else she needs to protect and take care of and hold back with. Riley can't stand this. He had enjoyed their sparring in OOMM and during sex. Now she's careful with him. When he tells her he can help her patrol, she dissuades him. When he mentions fighting with her or sex, he senses her holding back with him. When she's upset about her mother - and he offers her a shoulder to cry on or support, she seems to turn away, stating how she can't let it out on him. He begins to actually feel weak and kittenish. Unneeded. And the most important thing to Riley is to feel needed - that is his purpose in life. As he tries to explain to Buffy in Into The Woods after she's discovered him with Vamp trulls:  


>   
>  RILEY: It's about me taking care of you! It's about letting me in. So you don't have to be on top of everything all the time.  
>  BUFFY: But I do. That's part of what being a slayer is. (shakes her head) And that's what this is really about, isn't it? You can't handle the fact that I'm stronger than you.

And that's the basic problem - Riley needs to be needed and Buffy needs to be understood, accepted on some primal level and Riley just can't do that. How can he? He has no identity at this point past Buffy. How can he accept or understand her role and who she is, when he can't figure out himself? She is right by the way, it is partly that she is stronger than him, that she doesn't need him in the way he wants to be needed.

Spike also has an identity problem. After he learns that he can't remove the chip and kill the slayer, he freaks out. As he states to Harmony:  


>   
>  SPIKE: Buffy, Buffy, Buffy! Everywhere I turn, she's there! That nasty little face, that ... bouncing shampoo-commercial hair, that whole sodding holier-than-thou attitude.  
>  HARMONY: Well, aren't we kinda unholy, by the-  
>  SPIKE: She follows me, you know, tracks me down. I'm her pet project. Drive Spike round the bend. Makes every day a fresh bout of torture. . You don't understand. I can't get rid of her. She's everywhere. She's haunting me, Harmony!  
> 

For a year and a half Spike has been trying to find a way of destroying Buffy, getting rid of her. The chip prevents him from physically hurting her, while she, on the other hand, can seriously damage him. And she keeps pestering him - asking for information, either with money or physical abuse. For a brief moment he thought he was free of the restraints - in fact he even relishes the idea of biting her neck and swimming in her blood: "Bathe in the slayer's blood. Gonna dive in it. (with relish) Swim in it. I'm gonna do the bloody backstroke." Then he discovers he can't, again! This is the turning point for Spike - prior to this episode, Spike concentrated all his passion on destroying Buffy, blaming her for the direction his life had gone, but never quite examining why. Now he is forced to, just as Riley is in this episode. What does he discover? The worst thing possible, that what he feels for the slayer, is not "seething hatred" so much as love and seething desire.

Poor Spike. He knows this is an impossible situation, but he can't help himself, he must find some way of resolving it. For awhile he just stalks her, compensates by stroking and beating up a manikin, sex games with Harmony, watching Buffy's window, he even considers watching her get killed but has second thoughts and ends up helping her and her friends, instead. (See Family, Season 5 Btvs.) Then she comes to him to find out about the past two slayers he killed, this surprises him and never one to pass up an opportunity - he milks it for all it's worth. Only to get brutally rejected - heck she uses the same words his first love did, "you're beneath me." Furious, Spike once again resorts to old behavior patterns and gets a gun, determined to kill her. Yet as both Harmony and Drusilla point out - he wasn't able to do it before the chip?why does he think he can do it now? They are right of course, but it's not the chip that stops him, it's something else. It's Buffy's tears. Once again we see a marked contrast between Spike's journey and Riley's. Riley is fighting demons while Spike is comforting Buffy. Both are weak at this point. Riley with no superhuman strength and Spike with superhuman strength but the inability to unleash it on anything human. Of the two, Spike seems to get what Buffy needs while Riley remains clueless. I always found this incredibly ironic - Riley tells Buffy she never leans on him, let Riley is never around for her to do it. He has separated himself from Buffy, yet he blames her for it. Spike, meanwhile, a soulless demon, seems to understand what she needs and calmly sits beside her and pats her shoulder. We know she confides in him - because in the very next episode, it's Spike who tells Riley that Joyce has gone to the hospital.

Riley says how much he loves Buffy, but I was never quite sure why. He never really appears to be there when she needs him. Instead he is either out slaying the vamps that hurt her or getting sucked on himself. ( While Spike is helping the gang in Family - Riley is at a bar getting sucked on. While Buffy is asking Spike about how he killed slayers and for some understanding into what she actually is, Riley is endangering himself and the gang fighting the vamp who hurt her. (Fool For Love) ). I always thought Fool For Love was an interesting episode because it demonstrates three things: 1) That Buffy is struggling to understand what a slayer is and what this means. 2) Spike understands Buffy is struggling to understand this and does attempt to explain it to her and while doing so, attempts to explain himself and what it means to be a vampire. He is in effect attempting to explain what Dracula once told her, that yes we are connected but not necessarily in the way you think. 3) Riley doesn't understand what Buffy needs at all. He goes into protector mode. Each character falls back on their instincts. Riley's - to be male protector or avenger. Buffy - to try and figure out her situation and go to the best source. Spike - to play instructor and in the process somehow get closer to the object of his affection. (By the way, Spike reminded me a lot of Giles in Fool for Love, a dark Giles.)

The next parallel in the Spike/Riley developmental arc is Into the Woods/As You Were. Both episodes deal with a break up. In the first - Into the Woods - Spike appears to break up Riley and Buffy by showing Buffy, Riley's late night activities with vamp trulls. But, it's really not the vamp trulls that breaks them up. It's the characters inability to appreciate and understand each other's needs. Riley desires something more from Buffy than convienent sex and the occasional pat on the head. Buffy wants Riley to accept and understand the darkness in her. Riley, for his part, is unfair to Buffy. He demands that she give him a purpose - because outside of her, he has none. When she can't - he leaves. But he doesn't leave because of Buffy, as Buffy and Xander seem to believe, he leaves because he has no reason outside of Buffy to stay. He has to leave to rediscover his identity.

In As You Were, Riley returns newly confident, a bit darker, with a wife and exposes Spike as the opportunistic amoral fool he's always been. Spike appears to be in Riley's old position in Buffy's life, a convenient sexual and fighting associate. If you look at the episode literally, it looks like Buffy's relationship with Spike is not all that different than it was with Riley, except she professed to be in love with Riley, she apparently can't love Spike. (Odd, she seems to enjoy sex more with Spike, yet was supposedly in love with Riley.) So her relationship with Riley was better right? But Spike's relationship with Buffy is very different than Riley's was. Spike for one thing understands Buffy, I'm not sure Riley ever did. Spike has also been in Buffy's life a lot longer than Riley was and Buffy has to some extent depended on Spike for a lot more. Buffy never confided the things she's confided to Spike - to Riley. (In Season 5 - Riley didn't know about Joyce until Spike told him. And Riley still doesn't know what Dawn is. Nor does he appear to know that Buffy died and was torn out of heaven.) Spike and Buffy actually have a relationship that has been built on a certain amount of trust. Buffy may not be able to "love" Spike, but she certainly seems to be able to trust him - with things that she does not appear to trust any one else with. (See Checkpoint Season 5 - when she brings her mother and Dawn to Spike's lair, or Spiral? Or The Gift - when she asks Spike to protect her sister if anything happens to her? Or Afterlife - when she trusts Spike with her secret?) Riley never gained that level of trust from Buffy - it's the reason that Riley felt shut out. So, I'm not really sure Buffy ever really loved Riley. How can you love someone you can't trust? Was Buffy's relationship with Riley really healthier?

As You Were is different in another respect as well - Buffy doesn't blast Spike for the demon eggs in the same way she blasts Riley. She blames herself for forgetting that's what he is. "I'm not here to bust your chops about your stupid scheme, either. That's just you. I should have remembered." She blames herself for using him. Yet wasn't she doing the same thing to Riley back in Into the Woods? I'm not sure. She denies it. And she does run after him or rather after his helicopter. But - there's something that always bugged me about this scene: I think its that she only decides to run after him because of what Xander said:

>   
>  Xander: "you've been treating Riley like the rebound guy. When he's the one that comes along once in a lifetime. (Buffy looks dismayed) He's never held back with you. He's risked everything. And you're about to let him fly because you don't like ultimatums? If he's not the guy, if what he needs from you just isn't there, (shakes head) let him go. Break his heart, and make it a clean break. But if you really think you can love this guy ... I'm talking scary, messy, no-emotions-barred need ... if you're ready for that ... then think about what you're about to lose."

Nice speech. Were you fooled? Yep. So was I. But it always nagged at me. Why? Because when I was Buffy's age, I did the same dumb thing - I got desperate, I got scared, I decided that if I lost this guy, there would never be another one which meant I'd have to be alone, forever. And that would be bad. Buffy doesn't run after Riley, because he's the long-haul guy or because she loves him. Buffy runs after Riley - because she is afraid of being alone. Her mother's sick. Her sister's not real. This is the only normal guy that she liked who's ever taken an interest in her. What if there's no one else? Can she really afford to be picky? She didn't hear what Xander said. She does however hear it in As You Were. Which is ironic, because unlike Riley, she's really come to depend on Spike. She depends on him to help her protect her sister, to help with the fighting, to confide in, to tell her that she's pretty and worthwhile, and to have sex with. She even admits in the final scene of As You Were that she still wants him. I never sensed she "wanted" Riley, nor for that matter did Riley or he wouldn't have gone to the vamp trulls. But she believes her feelings for Spike are fundamentally wrong, for numerous reasons some of which she even states: "He's an evil blood sucking fiend. He's everything I hate. He's everything I'm against?"(Dead Things) And of course for the reasons Riley clearly states: "Deadly ... amoral ... opportunistic. Or have you forgotten?" Spike is the evil blood sucking fiend. She can't really love him, right? She's just using him and that's wrong. He is everything she's against. Everything she hates. The black and white vamp in Giles' Restless dream. It's wrong. Riley on the other hand was the strong, upstanding, good guy. The Cowboy Guy in Willow's Restless dream. Xander's long-haul guy. She should have been with Riley not Spike. Never Spike. But if Buffy really believes Spike is deadly, amoral and evil isn't it strange that she tells Riley not to kill him? Or that she even takes the time to talk to him at the wedding in Hell's Bells?

Both Riley and Spike have an identity crisis, that appears to be associated with or brought on by Buffy, but are actually separate from her. Riley's dilemma is what is his mission now that he is no longer connected with the Initiative. Can he go back and work for the same organization that betrayed his trust? Can he go back and be the demon hunter he once was? Without that calling - he feels useless. So Riley makes his choice - he goes with his friends to Belize and fights demons again. The world becomes simpler, more black and white, with rules and boundaries and the end zone. Buffy just complicated things. Spike's dilemma is who and what exactly is he now? He's not really been a vampire for quite some time. He's not a human. He's desperately and completely in love with a "mortal woman" who is not only his kind's mortal enemy, but who has told him repeatedly that she can never return his affections because of what he is and what he represents. Talk about being stuck.

Spike is in exactly the same place Riley was prior to Into the Woods. No longer sure who the hell he is and what he should do with his life. Up until now, he's been treading water, taking whatever scraps of affection the Scooby Gang and Buffy offer him. But I think he's reached his limit, the scraps have started to dry up and Buffy is acting somewhat erractically. If Spike's story is to continue to follow Riley's - Spike needs to leave. He needs to go into his own jungle and hopefully remerge like Riley, transformed for the better? In The Island of Dr. Moreau - the men and beasts are to some degree transformed by their experience. They can't ever go back to as they were. The same is true in The Tempest - Caliban is to some degree transformed and appears to learn the error of his ways. He can't go back. Will this be what happens to Spike? Will he leave Sunnydale, go into the jungle, and re-emerge as the old villainous romantically insecure Spike that we love to hate but who operated as more of a metaphor for arrested development and lust than as an actual character, or will he emerge as a new man, transformed by his experience and confident and secure in who and what he is. A man who does not require Buffy or anyone else to define him? Who understands the need for balance between light and dark in himself and others? Someone more like Giles? I'm not sure how transformed Riley is, since we aren't told all that much, but I think we can safely assume he has a better understanding of the darkness and light in himself than he did before. So if Spike continues to parallel Riley's path, shouldn't he remerge more or less the same way, with a slight twist?


End file.
